1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal, and more particularly to a mobile communication terminal connectable to a wireless LAN, a communication control method performed in the mobile communication terminal, and a communication control program recorded on a computer readable recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mobile phone which wirelessly communicates with a base station by radio cannot communicate in a location outside a communication area where radio waves are not transmitted or in a location with poor reception even within the communication area. In this case, the mobile phone indicates out-of-service on its display to notify a user that he cannot communicate. Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-20110 discloses a mobile phone which indicates on a display portion that it is unable to communicate when the mobile phone is located out of a service area of a radio base station or when an interference radio wave interferes with a reception radio wave. The mobile phone includes a determination means for determining a state in which the mobile phone is located out of the service area and a state in which the interference radio wave interferes with the reception radio wave and notifying a user of the determination result.
However, in a case of a wireless LAN (Local Area Network), one mobile communication terminal may be included in the areas of access points of different kinds of LANs. In this case, the mobile communication terminal is connected to a wireless LAN selected from a plurality of wireless LANs. Furthermore, the mobile communication terminal may not be located within the service area of access point of one kind of wireless LAN but may be located within the service area of access point of another kind of wireless LAN. For example, when the mobile communication terminal moves from within the service area of one kind of wireless LAN out of that service area, the location after moving may be out of the service areas of all wireless LANs or may be within the service area of another kind of wireless LAN. The communication terminal searches for a wireless LAN that it can communicate with, and then automatically connects to the detected wireless LAN, in order to connect to the wireless LAN that it has communicated with or another wireless LAN to maintain the communication. Therefore, mere movement of the mobile communication terminal out of a service area of a wireless LAN consumes much power. In particular, since a mobile communication terminal is driven by a battery with a limited storage capacity, power consumption is preferably reduced as much as possible.
On the other hand, a user can empirically know whether within a service area of a wireless LAN or outside a service area. The user may know beforehand a location where a wireless LAN cannot be detected even if a connectable wireless LAN is searched for. However, the user does not know that the mobile communication terminal automatically searches for a wireless LAN in such a location and therefore cannot stop the search, thereby wasting the power.